and behold how wonderfully the countries where our faith was nurtured, where our liberties were generated, where our philosophy and literature, the fountains of our intellectual grace and beauty, sprang up, were as distinctly walled out by God's hand with mountain ramparts, from the eruptions and interuptions of barbarism, as if at the especial prayer of the early fathers of man's destinies, I am lost in an exalting admiration. 3. Look at the bold barriers of Palestine! see how the infant liberties of Greece were sheltered from the vast tribes of the uncivilized north by the hights of Hamus and Rhodope! behold how the Alps describe their magnificent crescent, inclining their opposite extremities to the Adriatic and Tyrrhine Seas, locking up Italy from the Gallic and Teutonian hordes till the power and spirit of Rome had reached their maturity, and she had opened the wide forest of Europe to the light, spread far her laws and language, and planted the seeds of many mighty nations! 4. Thanks to God for mountains! Their colossal firmness seems almost to break the current of time itself; the geologist in them searches for traces of the earlier world; and it is there, too, that man, resisting the revolutions of lower regions, retains through innumerable years, his habits and his rights. While a multitude of changes have remolded the people of Europe; while languages, and laws, and dynasties, and creeds, have passed over it like shadows over the land scape, the children of the Celt and the Goth, who had fled to the mountains a thousand years ago, are found there now, and show us in face and figure, in language and garb, what their fathers were; show us a fine contrast with the modern tribes dwelling below and around. them; and show us, moreover, how adverse is the spirit of the mountain to mutability, and that there the fiery heart of freedom is found for ever. XLVIII.—IRELAND. C. E. LESTER. She has Ireland still has an existence as a nation. her universities and her literature. She is still the "Emerald Isle of the Ocean." An air of romance and chivalry is around her. The traditionary tales that live in her literature invest her history with heroic beauty. But she has no need of these. Real heroes, the O'Neils, the O'Briens, and the Emmets, will be remembered as long as self-denying patriotism and unconquerable valor are honored among men. 2. In every department of literature she will take her place. Where is the wreath her shamrock does not adorn? Where the muse that has not visited her hills? Her harp has ever kindled the soul of the warrior and soothed the sorrows of the broken-hearted. It has sounded every strain that can move the human heart to greatness or to love. Whatever vices may stain her people, they are free from the crime of voluntary servitude. The Irishman is the man last to be subdued. Possessing an elasticity of character that will rise under the heaviest oppression, he wants only a favorable opportunity and a single spark to set him in a blaze. 3. The records of religious persecutions in all countries have nothing more hideous to offer to our notice than the Protestant persecutions of the Irish Catholics. On them, all the devices of cruelty were exhausted. Ingenuity was taxed to devise new plans of persecution, till the machinery of penal iniquity might almost be pronounced perfect. The great Irish chieftains and landlords were purposely goaded into rebellion, that they might be branded as traitors and their lands confiscated for the benefit of English adventurers. Such was the course adopted towards Earl Desmond, a powerful chief of Munster; such also was the treatment of O'Neil. When Queen Elizabeth heard of the revolt of the latter, she remarked to her courtiers: "It would be better for her servants, as there would be estates enough for them all." 4. This single expression of Elizabeth reveals the entire policy of the English Government towards Ireland. That injured country was the great repast at which every monarch bade his lords sit down and eat. After they had gorged their fill, the remains were left for those who came after Tranquillity succeeded these massacres, but it was the tranquillity of the graveyard. The proud and patriotic Irishmen were folded in the sleep of death, and the silence and repose around their lifeless corpses were called peace. "They made a solitude, And called it peace." 5. Often a great chief, possessed of large estates, was purposely driven by the most flagrant injustice and insults into open rebellion, that he might be branded as a traitor, and his rich possessions, by confiscation, revert to the English vampyres that so infested the land. Every cruelty and outrage that can dishonor our nature was perpetrated in these unjust wars by English soldiers. Cities were sacked, villages burned, and the helpless and the young slaughtered by thousands. A record of these scenes of crime and blood we cannot furnish. It is written, however, on every foot of Irish soil, and in the still living memories of many an Irish heart. XLIX. THE DESERTED VILLAGE. GOLDSMITH. The locality of this poem is supposed to be Lissoy, near Ballymahan, County Longford, Ireland, where the poet's brother Henry had his living. As usual in such cases, the place afterwards became the fashionable resort of poetical pilgrims, and paid the customary penalty of furnishing relics for the curious. The hawthorn bush has been converted into snuff-boxes, and now adorns the cabinets of poetical virtuosi. The social and political truths embodied in this beautiful Poem, have been signally vindicated by time, and were never more applicable than they are to the luxury and extravagance of our own times. In the dedication of "The Deserted Village," Goldsmith says: "In regretting the depopulation of the country, I inveigh against the increase of our luxuries, and here also I expect the shout of modern politicians against me. For twenty or thirty years past, it has been the fashion to consider luxury as one of the greatest national advantages, and all the wisdom of antiquity, in that particular, as erroneous Still, however, I must remain a professed ancient on that head, and continue to think those luxuries prejudicial to states by which so many vices are introduced, and so many kingdoms have been undone." 1. Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain, Where health and plenty cheered the laboring swain, ? Where smiling spring its earliest visit paid, And parting summer's lingering blooms delayed: Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease, Seats of my youth, when every sport could please, The sheltered cot, the cultivated farm, The decent church that topt the neighboring hill, 12 3 When toil remitting lent its turn to play, And all the village train, from labor free, The young contending as the old survey'd; 20. |